The Lost World (1997) * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Money talks, but do dinosaurs run the marathon? In this movie they do; too bad the humans don't shut up.
The worst part about THE LOST WORLD, like its prequel JURASSIC PARK, is the humans. I'm reminded, oddly, of the more-or-less equally stupid humans in the garbage movie STARSHIP TROOPERS, who didn't know when to leave well enough alone either. I've never enjoyed watching movies that are about stupid people and don't know it, and THE LOST WORLD is no different. It is a few gorgeously done effects surrounded by Sargasso Seas of insanely dumb behavior. It's just so very, very tired that I'm amazed they didn't just stick a sequel number on it and dispense with the subtitle.
The plot (what there is of it) focuses on the dinosaurs who have more or less colonized the island that the original Jurassic Park was constructed on. It also brings back Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum), the doom-saying mathematician of the first movie, although his presence here isn't cemented: he's here because his wife is here, not because of plot demands. That sounds odd, coming from someone who preaches constantly about movies which have too much plot and too little character, but the characterization in this movie is thin enough that I was willing to reverse my rules for the time being. For enemies, we get a gang of hunters who want to bring back a T.Rex. What're they going to do, mount the head on the wall?
The story is handled in a manner I could call "Spielberg lite": the strained relationships between the generations, the urgent quasi-liberal flavor to the movie's "themes", the moments of breakneck action. In this movie they add up to virtually nothing, because it's not happening to anyone who merits our attention. Malcom we know about, but what's so important about him (or his wife or kid, for that matter) that we need to spend two hours with them? Aside from the way they nursemaid a baby dinosaur (and get the tar mauled out of them for doing so, in a scene of exponentially-exploding preposterousness), nothing. They're only smart enough to get them out of whatever the plot hands them. There's no sense that they're actually INVOLVED in any of this.
There are so many little betrayals that contribute to the big betrayals as well. For instance. Pete Postlewaite's character, allegedly a big game hunter, apparently doesn't even know how to hold his rifle to prevent it from filling up with rainwater. The incidental roles, like the sleazy corporate people (who get eaten and stepped on like jelly beans), aren't filled out with any details that would make them more interesting as anything except set-pieces.
There is a magnificent book out there called DINOTOPIA. It is a work of real vision, a story about a world where the dinosaurs did not die out and were in fact domesticated by man. Buy it and read it with your children, and spare them the tiresomeness of this movie -- and the one that preceded it, and the one(s) that will almost certainly follow it.
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